Fundamentals of Database Management Systems, Second Edition

CHAPTER 13

THE DATA WAREHOUSE

Traditionally, most data was created to support applications that involved current corporate operations: accounting, inventory management, personnel management, and so forth. As people began to understand to power of information systems and their use became more pervasive, other options regarding data began to develop. For example, companies began to perform sales trend analyses that required historic sales data. The idea was to predict future sales and inventory requirements based on past sales history. Applications such as this led to the realization that there is a great deal of value in historic data, and that it would be worthwhile to organize it on a very broad basis. This is the data warehouse.

OBJECTIVES

• Compare the data needs of transaction processing systems with those of decision support systems.
• Describe the data warehouse concept and list its main features.
• Compare the enterprise data warehouse with the data mart.
• Design a data warehouse.
• Build a data warehouse, including the steps of data extraction, data cleaning, data transformation, and data loading.
• Describe how to use a data warehouse with online analytic processing and data mining.
• List the types of expertise needed to administer a data warehouse.
• List the challenges in data warehousing.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Introduction

The Data Warehouse Concept

• The Data is Subject Oriented
• The Data is Integrated
• The Data is Non-Volatile
• The Data is Time Variant
• The Data Must Be High Quality
• The ...